Probably the 1000000000th preloader question

programming flash
1

Hi there, hopefully someone can help me with this,

What I’ll have eventually is a main.swf, and about 8 external.swf’s loadmove-ing into the main.swf. But I want to preload the external swf’s.

  1. So the main.swf loads.
  2. The user presses a menu button. For example an ‘about’ section.
  3. The about.swf will preload (the loadbar will appear), then start playing the movie once loaded.
  4. The movie will fade in the picture and then stop.
  5. When the user picks another menu option, I want the current movie to start playing so it fades out.
  6. Then the new external.swf will preload and then play.

Its just basically so I can have my sections load in, then load out once another selection has been made. I can already do this with code I have but not to work with a preloader bar.

I’ve tried to get it to work but the preloader bar doesnt appear.

I had a look at claudios example, but its not really what i’m after. I’ve searched the board for help too.

Heres my file of what i’ve tried so far, http://www.hubl.co.uk/preloader.zip

I know its alot to ask but hopefully someone can have a quick look and tell me where i’m going wrong.

Cheers :slight_smile:

2

I wrote a tutorial on the exact effect that you want, but I’m only not sure if the preloader that I added will work. So this is a great chance to test if the preloader from my tutorial works. You can find it here. And if the preloader doesn’t work, you’d still have the effect =)

[EDIT] Oh, bummer, you already have the effect :P[/EDIT]

3

The preloader in your FLA works fine for me =)

4

Yeah but then click the other button which loads another section, the preloader doesnt appear for the 2nd button you press.

The bar is supposed to re-appear and preload the 2nd section then play it.

Thanks alot for checkin it out

5

I think I got it to work.

6

Yeah that works, but the currently loaded movie doesnt play out. When a user loads the first movie it fades in. Then when they press the other button, the movie should just fade out, then preloader the new movie and fade it in.

See what I mean? If not i’ll try explain better,

Cheers!:slight_smile:

7

Oh, sorry. Lemme see about that.

[EDIT] I know the problem, but to solve it I’d need the FLA’s of the external swf’s. I’m gonna use the external SWF that came with the zip.

Almost done …[EDIT]

8

Done =) It works perfectly now, although the preloader will only show up for a split second because of the low filesize of the external SWF’s.

9

Thats superb, thanks very much!!

10

You’re welcome :wink:

11

Hello again haha, i’m maybe chancing my luck a bit but…

The zip you provided is great if there are only 2 menu options, but I want to be able to have many menu options, as I stated in my inital post.

‘What I’ll have eventually is a main.swf, and about 8 external.swf’s’

When it comes to the end of one of the external.swf’s the actionscript points to the other swf. But if there were more than two externals? Do you see my problem?

Sorry about this, all your help is much appreciated! I dont mean to be ungrateful.

Cheers

12

Workin’ on it :slight_smile:

[EDIT]
It’s working, now all is left is routine work.

– Done. Zipping files …
[/EDIT]

13

Here it is :slight_smile: Can I turn this into a tutorial ? Then it would be a “Advanced Full Flash Site” :beam:

14

Yeah go for it!

Just so long as you mention me & ‘oldnewbie’ from the flashkit forums, I altered his code to make the original zip file you saw.

So in this new version, is it simple enough to add more than 8 externals if need be? Im just having a look at it just now, so i’ll probably find out! looks good, well done!

:slight_smile:

EDIT: Oh and just a tiny tiny thing, how about if you didnt want an external file to load initially, only on the first button press?

15

Very simple ! All you have to do is create a new SWF (with the set-up of the other ones) copy a button, and change two numbers. =)

G2G !

16

Yeah i had a look, great work! People having been asking how to load external swfs with a loadbar for a while now, finally there is an answer!

:thumb:

17

That’s why I wanted to create a tutorial about it =)

EDIT: Oh and just a tiny tiny thing, how about if you didnt want an external file to load initially, only on the first button press?

Only takes a little adjustment … I’m gonna attach the modified FLA in a minute :slight_smile:

18

Here it is =) Ah, something I forgot to tell you: when you have a look at the FLA you’ll see that on the buttons, there’s this AS:

[AS]
_root.curmovie = “external1”;
[/AS]

This is a name given to the first external movie. You have to make sure that the filename of the swf you want to load has to be this variable.swf. So if you’d change this value to “home”, you have to change the filename of your swf to “home.swf”. If you stick to that, it’ll work fine =)